Month: August 2017

Diversity/RacismAirbnb has been struggling with racial discrimination on the hosting as well as the booking side for the past years. This week they announced that they have hired Lethal Weapon actor Danny Glover (who is also a social justice activist) as an advisor to help the company overcome their issues.

Gender
According to a recent survey in UK, being promoted to a management role has a negative impact on women’s job satisfaction. The main reason for this was subtle discrimination and the beliefs – from both men and women – that women are less competent managers.

Girls EmpowermentAlways (Procter & Gamble) just launched a new video for their #LikeaGirl campaign. The advert talks about the fear of failure and was created after the Always Confidence & Puberty Survey revealed that girls in puberty miss important growth opportunities as 50% of them feel paralyzed by the fear of failure.

Diversity
This was a bold campaign: A German supermarket (Edeka) in Hamburg decided to pull all foreign-made products off their shelves for one day, showing how important diversity is for our everyday lives. Read more here.

DiversityIntel just released their latest diversity report and they are now half way into their five year diversity initiative. The report shows slow growth for women and minorities, with women representing 26% of their workforce (up from 24.7% in 2015) and minorities 12.65 (up from 12.4% in 2015).

RaceProcter & Gamble launched a new advert “The Talk” as part of their “My Black is Beautiful” campaign. The short video shows black mothers preparing their children for racism they will face.
Procter & Gamble has a long history of raising awareness for social issues through their campaigns, the Always “Like a Girl” initiative probably being the most popular one.

Unconscious Bias
I had somehow missed this TEDx Talk from Kristen Pressner (Head of HR at Roche Diagnostics) last year, but it’s really worth listening to: Kristen, being a senior female leader, talks about how she recognized her own unconscious bias against women leaders and how she returned it to consciousness.

GenderDevelopmental psychologists have been warning about gender segregation of toys for a while as this might actually harm childhood development. This very interesting experiment looked at how adults play with children based on their gender – only to learn later that things are not always what they seem.

Girls Empowerment
Over 3 years old already but still one of the most popular videos – the Always “Like a Girl” campaign. If you haven’t watched it, please do!

“Walking like a girl”, “throwing a ball like a girl” “fighting like a girl” is often used in a very negative context. This video is showing children and teenager who are being ask to act “like a girl” – and their reactions.

Diversity
This beautiful Danish TV station ad“All that we share” shows that putting people into boxes does not work and that we all have more in common than we think.

Women in the Workforce
A very interesting NY Times article on the various reasons why we are still battling to see more women heading up Fortune 500 companies. The author spoke to women who almost made it to the top and also looked at a Korn Ferry survey with senior executives and there still seems to be a strong bias against women becoming CEOs.

Unconscious BiasGail Tolstoi-Miller did a fantastic TED Talk about unconscious bias in recruitment. Gail is a career coach with many years of experience in recruitment and shares her own experience with biases and how she unraveled them.

Generation
When we think of a 91 year old woman we usually think of a granny who can barely move. Not Johanna Quaas though – this 91 year German gymnast is still competing and has more core strength than most people half her age (or younger). Read more here.

LGBTQThis one I had only shared last week but it got lots of votes:
If you like Pixar/animated movies, you have to watch this: Two computer animation students just released their senior thesis project, a short film called “In a Heartbeat”,telling the story of a boy and his boy crush. So sweet!

Female EmpowermentNike’s advert “Da Da Ding” is a very empowering video featuring various Indian female athletes and Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone. Sports is often seen as very masculine and not suitable for young women in India and this video is encouraging them to break conventions.

DiversityFacebook just released their latest Diversity Report: They managed to increase their females in the overall workforce as well as in technical and leadership roles and for the first time the number of white people has dropped below 50% (but black employees still only make 3% of their total employees). Read more here.

Gender
According to the “Women in Leadership” survey that was just released by the Rockefeller Foundation, one out of four Americans believe that it is more likely that people will time travel in their lifetime than reaching 50/50 gender parity in Fortune 500 companies. Read more here.

Unconscious Bias
Very good HBR article: the Center of Talent Innovation did a survey with college-educated professionals to understand what impact the perception of bias has on employees engagement. Not surprisingly, there was a high correlation. What was interesting though is that men were more likely to perceive bias than women.

LGBTQIf you like Pixar/animated movies, you have to watch this: Two computer animation students just released their senior thesis project, a short film called “In a Heartbeat”, telling the story of a boy and his boy crush. So sweet!